Dear Spug

The lake I am fishing is stuffed with crayfish, and when I wind in my bait is either gone or chewed. At the moment I am using single bottom baits surrounded by boilies, or just single bright pop-up hookbaits. I haven’t used anything other than boilies. Do you think another form of hookbait would be better? I cannot use tiger nuts as they are banned. Any tips would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,
Joanne Lee, Hertfordshire.

Hi Joanne, and thanks for the question.

Ahh, crayfish – they can certainly be a problem! It’s one that we have had to deal with whilst fishing in France on quite a few occasions. However, fear not, as there is one really easy way of getting round this, still using boilies if you so wish. You will just need to buy some mosquito mesh, which is available from camping shops or most of the bigger carp tackle shops.

How to Prepare Your Hookbaits

Place your boilie into the corner of the mesh and then slowly twist the boilie round and round until you have a tail off the back of the boilie. Then, keep hold of the boilie between your thumb and forefinger and whip some 2-4lb breaking strain mono round the tail as tight as you can to the back of the boilie. If you go round about 4-5 times that is enough, and if you have done this correctly then the mesh will be wrapped tightly round the bait. Now you need to cut the tail just above the mono, and to tidy the whole thing up you need to carefully use a lighter to melt the tail just above where you have whipped on the mono. Using the bottom end of a lighter, squash down the melted tail; by doing this you should bind the mesh and mono together, thus making it impossible for the crays to nick your bait. Once prepared, slip the bait onto your Hair with the small melted tail between the hook and back of the boilie.

Place a boilie in some mosquito mash and twist it around tightly to create a tail, like this.	Now take some mono anf tie a knot like this to keep the mesh tight around the boilies.
Take a pair of sharp scissors and carefully trim away the tail of the mosquito mash, like so.	Now take a lighter and carefully burn the remainder of mesh tail to secure it in place, as illustrated above.
Whilst the mesh is hot, blob it down against the boilie, using the bottom of the lighter.	Hey presto! One meshed boilie that will withstand the attentions of the nasty crayfish.

This way of preparing your hookbaits takes a little practice, and the key to it is to keep the mesh tight around the boilie at all times. As soon as you have mastered it then it’s a skill that will catch you a lot of fish. When we first did this we were a little bit worried that the carp may not pick up the bait as it just did not seem right, however we were very quickly catching fish and now have total confidence in it.

This big mother was landed on a cray-proof meshed hookbait.

Hope this helps, and be lucky.

Spug